How to Grow Tomatoes

There's nothing like picking vine-ripened tomatoes grown at home. Eat them on the spot or slice them and serve with cool cucumbers – they taste great. Delicious recipes from around the world have made tomatoes a tasty and popular ingredient in many dishes.

As you plan your home-grown tomato project, keep in mind that the growth of healthy, juicy tomatoes requires:

Where to Grow Tomatoes

You can choose among numerous varieties of tomatoes, depending on your taste. And you can grow them many ways:

Grow them in your vegetable garden.

Plant them in raised beds.

Plant them in the decorative pots around your patio, deck or rooftop.

Hang them upside down in special containers.

Make special tomato planters out of plastic storage boxes and steel tomato cages.

Let's say you carefully planned your tomato-planting project according to your lifestyle desires. You decided to grow tomatoes in containers on your patio, Your project is now complete. You've planted healthy tomato plants, and given them just what they need for healthy growth. From now until you pick your juicy tomatoes, careful watering or irrigation is essential.

How to Water Tomato Plants

Tomatoes require just the right amount of water for healthy growth. There are several basic approaches.

Let nature do the watering for you. Caution: During long dry spells, your tomato plants compensate for the lack of water and slow their growth. The result: shriveled vines and puny tomatoes.

Use a watering can or hose and water your tomato plants a couple times a week. Try to avoid wetting the foliage; apply the water to the root zone. Caution: Repeated wet foliage can lead to fungus and disease. Sometimes you forget to water your plants or don't have time. Or you overwater them. Or you go off on vacation during a dry spell.

Plant your tomatoes in a container that has a water reservoir and wick system. This keeps the soil or planting medium moist and allows the roots to extract just the right amount of moisture. This is an excellent approach. Caution: Don't forget to replenish the water in the container's water reservoir.

Use an automatic drip watering irrigation system. There are easy-to-install household drip irrigation systems on the market today that can apply just the right amount of water directly to root zones of your tomatoes. Caution: Make sure the system is working properly and applying just the right amount of water.

Drip Irrigation Watering for your Tomatoes

Let's say you decided to grow tomatoes in containers on your patio, and you'll use drip irrigation. Rain Bird offers a wide variety of components, kits and parts that make a simple drip irrigation system easy to install.

You'll need a faucet connectiion, enough connecting tubingto run from your faucet connection to your patio and alongside the plant containers, and short lengths of quarter-inch tubing attached to drip emitters that deliver a precise amount of water to each one of your tomato plants.

This Orbit Digital Watering Timer and Valve connects to your faucet. You can program it to turn the water on and off every day, every 2nd day, 3rd day – and more – up to 4 times a day. Many other programming options are available.

Or Use Manual Control

Simply turn your faucet on and leave it on for a measured amount of time, then turn it off. This works, but it is definitely not for those with limited time and patience.

How to Control Your Tomato Watering Using Your Smartphone

If you are inclined to home automation, there are ways to control your drip irrigation schedule over the Internet. For example, if you have already installed an INSTEON Plug-In Starter Kit to control home lights via Internet, you can incorporate an EZFlora INSTEON/X10 Sprinkler Controller into your home automation system

The EZFlora Irrigation Controller controls up to 8 zones. (Only one zone is needed for the tomato drip irrigation system described in this article.) It controls 24-volt valves, such as those supplied by Rain Bird.

You can turn your drip irrigation system on or off using your PC or WiFi-enabled phone – from anywhere.

Locate the EZFlora Controller inside your house, in the garage or another protected area. Run a pair of wires rated for underground burial from the EZFlora to the 24-volt ac valve located near your patio in a valve box for protection. Use water-proof electrical connectors. For a permanent installation run underground plastic piping from the 24-volt valve box near your patio to a shutoff valve at your house. Be sure to install a backflow protector and adhere to your local plumbing and electrical codes.

An irrigation installer can help you plan your system and install it for you.

Whether you choose a simple drip irrigation system or an Internet-controlled system, have fun putting it together and watching your plants produce delicious ripe red tomatoes.

What is your Favorite Variety of Tomato?

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Author

John Dove 7 years ago

Hi caglar -- Glad to know that farmers find drip irrigation very useful -- especially in some climates. Fine tune your drip irrigation system and it will work wonders! Keep up the good work.

caglar 7 years ago

It is a useful information about drip irrigation. I am a farmer and we have very large fields, before drip

irrigation system was found it was a nightmare to irrigate all those fields because where i live is a place

that does not rain so much. Now we use drip irrigation, saving so many water and it is a lot easier to irrigate

the field with that. I am trying to read everything about drip irrigation and i recommend every farmer to use that

technique, so i am grateful for everyone who gives information about it. I also found a very good guide about drip

irrigation and it may be useful too for those who want to learn more information about that;

Author

John Dove 7 years ago

Hey KingDrew and Glenn -- Container-grown deck tomatoes and and raised gardens are two excellent ways to grow tomatoes. Have fun and enjoy the fruits of your labor!

Glenn S. 7 years agofrom Delaware

You wrote this article just in time for me to get my garden set up. This year I will using raised gardens for my veggies. Thanks for your advice.

G

Drew Bobbitt 7 years agofrom Atlanta, GA

I really enjoyed this article. My fiancée and I are going to plant a few tomatoes on our deck this spring to see if we have a green enough thumb to plant a whole garden in the future.

Author

John Dove 7 years ago

You are very welcome. I love tomatoes and look forward to a summer of enjoying these red fruits of summer. (Yes, the tomato is technically a fruit according to Wikipedia! But it is treated as a vegetable in the kitchen.) -- Regards, John